Collaboration Merges Riches Of 3 World-class Museums

January 23, 2001|By Celestine Bohlen, New York Times News Service.

NEW YORK — The global reach of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum stretched further this week with the announcement of a three-way collaboration by the New York-based Guggenheim, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The new menage a trois is built on the existing marriage of the Hermitage and the Guggenheim, which is to result in a joint exhibition of masterpieces in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas this year.

The venerable Kunsthistorisches Museum, home to the vast collection put together by the Hapsburg dynasty, adds one more dimension to the still-evolving concept of an international museum partnership, directors of the three museums said at a news conference in Vienna.

"It is rooted in our awareness of a changing world, a world in which political, geographic and cultural boundaries are opening up," Wilfried Seipel, director general of the Kunsthistorisches, said in a statement.

To New Yorkers, the impact of the agreement may be visible in a few years with the opening of the Guggenheim's planned new museum on the East River near Wall Street, where space would be set aside for works from both the Hermitage and the Kunsthistorisches. The $678 million museum, designed by Frank O. Gehry, architect of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, is being prepared for review by city and state authorities.

The three-way relationship will allow a steady exchange of exhibitions, collaboration among museum staffs and the sharing of other resources, museum officials said.

"It is not just an exchange of exhibitions, but it is also going to be an exchange of curatorial staffs," said Nicolas Iljine, the European representative of the Guggenheim Foundation. "You get much more marketing and picture power if you pool your resources."

In a telephone interview from Vienna, Dr. Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage, said the agreement might also extend to the notion of shared membership. "Maybe we will make a society of friends together," he said. "This would make our audiences broader and our possibilities greater."

The original alliance between the Guggenheim and the Hermitage was seen as a marriage of opposites, combining the strength of the New York-based museum in 20th Century art with the depth of the St. Petersburg museum's historical collection, which was begun by Catherine the Great. In the Kunsthistorisches Museum, with its impressive collection of Bruegels and other European masters, the Hermitage finds a like-minded partner.

The arrangements by the three are not exclusive, Iljine said, but the museums will give one another priority for visiting exhibitions and other exchanges. "One takes more care of contractual partners," Iljine said.

Thomas Krens, the director of the Guggenheim, has pioneered novel arrangements as he has positioned the museum for a global role. In addition to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, which opened to great fanfare in 1997, the Guggenheim has satellite outlets in Venice and Berlin and is now exploring an invitation to open a museum in Brazil.

The Hermitage has also pursued foreign outposts, with the recent opening of a small gallery at Somerset House in London and a larger one in Amsterdam that is to open in 2005. The Guggenheim is also a partner in the Hermitage's expansion into the General Staff Building across Palace Square from the main museum in St. Petersburg.